Silent Night?
by Sally Mn
Summary: Jim's watching over his own...


**S****ilent Night...?**

It's never 'Silent Night' now... not to a Sentinel.

From the balcony of the loft, Jim Ellison can just - _just _- if he filters out the carols, the TVs, the arguments, the parties, the Santas, the shoppers, the beggars, the drunken revelers being arrested, all the festive _and_ less than festive sounds around him... yes, he can _just _hear the choir singing from St. Catherine's over the bay. The choir are singing the very same hymns he sang in that same church as a child, because the one time his father always, always had for them was midnight mass on Christmas night.

He had meant to go this year. He hasn't been since Peru, but it just seemed right now. He wonders if his father is there tonight. Stephen and _his_ family will be, probably in the same pew, third from the front, that they sat in all those years ago.

But after those four hours in a tinsel-strewn ER, putting up with terrifyingly unfestive nurses in antlers, Blair's doctor wearing a Santa hat and Bah Humbug badge, and candystripers trying to serve him pink and white fake eggnog and all too real fruit cake... no way is he going out again. And no way is he leaving Sandburg alone till January - if not March. March 2003. The kid can't be trusted to stay out of trouble at the best of times... and the Season of Joy and Goodwill is never the best of times.

It isn't silent, but it is quiet. Sandburg is inside, asleep; the painkillers had kicked in on the way home and Jim needed Simon's help to steer a semi-somnolent, bandaged Ghost Of Hanukkah Yet to Come (the English Faculty's holiday bash had a Dickens theme - Jim didn't ask, and Blair didn't explain) up into the loft, out of his robes and into bed. He'll be okay, but the whole thing is going to take a lot of living down over the New Year... especially if the press gets wind of it.

And they will, but that's the commissioner's problem. Or PR, whatever.

Jim settles against the doorframe and stares out, absently noting the scents of preparations for tomorrow in the air. Pine needles, scented candles, driftwood fires, incense, baked meats, candies, cocoa and spices mingled with the usual city smells... someone downstairs has burnt their turkey, someone across the street is happily over-spicing the rum punch, and someone across the bay is crying salty tears at their fourteenth late-night schmaltzy Christmas movie.

The night sky over the city is always blurred and hazy from the lights; even on a clear night, even a Sentinel can't see too far. But he has learnt to pinpoint certain houses in the day, and tonight, with his senses on alert, he's fairly sure he can pinpoint Simon's house in the Cascade hills. The fact that Darryl is home for Christmas and has talked his dad into covering the house in lights has to help, of course. Even at this distance, an enormous glowing Santa in a Spaceship stands out.

He can't actually see the father and son - he's good, but he's not _that_ good, whatever Sandburg thinks. He'll check on them in the morning... nothing pointed, no 'Sentinel Checking Out His Tribe' nonsense, but he has a list now, a list of people he needs to know are okay today. Family, friends, Sandburg's mom if he can find her, the folk in Sandburg's party who've already called to see why he didn't make it and will want to hear more, the neighbors who'd seen a somewhat diminutive Death-robed figure bounce cheerily out that evening and get half-carried back in later, bruised and bandaged...

Okay, so they're all his tribe, but even as a Christmas present he isn't telling Blair he feels that way. Blair doesn't _do _Christmas anyway, being Jewish and all that. Maybe Jim will do it forHanukkah. Next Hanukkah. Next year.

His tribe is an odd one, but he wouldn't swap any of them, especially not the oddest, now safely sleeping inside. maybe he'll tell Blair _that_ for Hanukkah.

Or not..

**~oOo~**

Jim stretches out again, listening for St. Catherine's and the mass he _was _going to go to. The singing is muted, made oddly fuzzy by distance; he wonders if, by pushing his senses hard enough, he could make out the voices, actually hear Stephen and his wife and the little girls...

From his bed, Sandburg snuffles, mutters something about fruitcake as a lethal weapon, and settles again. Jim tenses, pulls everything back to sweep a quick check over the younger man, and relaxes. Battered and bruised, smelling of hospital salve, bandages and eggnog, his breathing a little harsh with pain... Blair is okay, that's all that matters.

Only you, Chief, he thinks. Only Sandburg could end up being held at gunpoint by a crooked, dim-witted Santa and his gang of armed but obtuse elves trying to hold up a Christmas party... the Cascade PD Family Christmas party at that - and yes, only Sandburg could have done it dressed as the Ghost Of Hanukkah Yet to Come. Jim has sworn never _ever _to volunteer to taxi him to any costume party again as long as they live - he'd never been so grateful for a Code Four in his life, though arriving at a party-turned-holdup to see Santa and Rudolf with automatics and the ugliest elves in creation...

He shudders, recalling it. _That_ was surreal.

And when Sandburg got grabbed by Frosty... surreal had turned into Yuletide nightmare, which he was going to dream about for months, and which would add yet another chapter to the Sandburg Zone legend at the PD.

Blair had ended up braining Frosty the Snowman with a four-foot fiberglass candy cane before the gang's Mrs. Santa - a sweet, very large old granny wanted in four states for armed robbery - had tried to shoot him, and the PD's Mrs. Santa - big Bertha Bernstein from Vice's typing pool - took her and Blair down in a flying tackle, and Jim laid into Rudolf with a very unChristmassy fury and both fists. Rudolf, Frosty, both Mrs. Santas and the Ghost had all ended up in ER along with the Captain of Homicide in a clown suit and several cops in costume who'd taken violent exception to their kiddies being scared or threatened by idiots like this and had started an all-in brawl.

The 'kiddies', of course, had loved the show, thought it better than TV. The cops - their moms and dads - were probably laughing... now. Now that it was over and everyone, even Sandburg, was sort of okay.

At St. Catherine's, the hymns have ceased, the service is ending. Jim can't make out the final words, not without filtering out every other noise around, and he can't quite do that. Inside, Sandburg shifts again and mutters something about 'this cane is loaded'... Jim can't help grinning. The kid's more than _sort _of okay, despite the cracked rib and concussion from being tackled straight into the side of a concrete gingerbread 'house'... he'll bounce back faster than a speeding sleigh, and be ready, as always, to clear Simon's disbelief and Brown and Rafe's teasing with a single - make that all too multiple - verbal bound.

Maybe Jim can keep him under lock and key till New Year's Day. Maybe the rib and the sore head - and the expected visits and cards from everyone at both the PD party and the Faculty bash will keep him busy and ready to rest up and relax.

Yeah, Ellison. And maybe there really _is_ a Ghost Of Hanukkah Yet to Come... apart from the one sleeping under his watch, that is.

Jim rather likes the idea himself.

**-the end-**


End file.
